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$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'My impression of Selco continues to decline',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2018/09/20.jpg" alt="No bikes allowed on the side trail" class="framed-centred-image" width="649" height="480"/>
<section id="drudgery">
	<h2>Drudgery</h2>
	<p>
		My discussion post for the day:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			What I would do in the case of noticing outliers would depend largely on the type of data I was handling.
			For example, if I was working with a sample of human heights and I came across a data point claiming someone to be four metres tall, I&apos;d probably consider the data to be corrupt in some way.
			Perhaps it was a typo.
			Perhaps a bit got flipped when it shouldn&apos;t have.
			If it were possible to re-survey the same exact sample, I would do so, and require photographic evidence for any extreme outliers.
			Otherwise, I&apos;d throw out the data set and take a new sample.
		</p>
		<p>
			For more-variable things, it&apos;d be harder.
			Again, if possible, verifying the sample&apos;s accuracy would be the first thought.
			But if that isn&apos;t possible, it&apos;s harder to say for sure that the sample is likely corrupt.
			I&apos;d likely back up the strange sample&apos;s results on disk somewhere in case it could later be verified, but in the mean time, conduct a new survey on a new sample.
			There&apos;s a good chance I&apos;d make the new sample size larger too, to try to catch more outliers (which would help estimate the validity of the initial sample), and I&apos;d be much more careful about my sampling to be sure any outliers found were actually real.
		</p>
		<p>
			In the end though, corrupt data is corrupt data.
			You don&apos;t want it mucking up your statistics.
			If you suspect something&apos;s off and can&apos;t prove otherwise, you&apos;ve got to get new data to work with so your statistics will actually be useful.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
</section>
<section id="bicycle">
	<h2>The bicycle</h2>
	<p>
		I tried out that bike my mother gave me further.
		The cargo box on the back is definitely nice, but the bicycle itself has a number of issues.
		The bizarre placement of the gear-shifting levers makes shifting gears while the bike is in motion difficult.
		It takes too much of your attention unless you&apos;re on a straight path with no obstacles, in which case you have the attention to spare.
		This pretty much leaves you without the ability to shift gears on most cases, so you have to stay on the high gear at all times, making the bike slow to start.
		Obviously, you can&apos;t change gears while stopped either, due to the physics of how all bike chains work.
		You just can&apos;t shift the chain over while the gears aren&apos;t in motion without physically grabbing the chain and moving it over.
		The left peddle is loose.
		I&apos;m not sure how to fix that.
		And even at top speed, the bike&apos;s pretty slow.
		Lastly, it seems to be hard on my right leg for some reason.
		I&apos;m not sure what that&apos;s about.
		There&apos;s no way I&apos;m making it to Eugene on that unless I get pretty desperate though.
	</p>
	<p>
		I tried to remove the seat to swap it with my own bike&apos;s seat.
		My own seat is too narrow, while this seat seems to work just fine.
		The bolt has gone soft though.
		I&apos;m not sure how to get it off.
		That same bolt is one of the ones that holds the cargo box on, too.
		I think the cargo box might be stuck with the bike for now.
		I know there&apos;s a way to get it off, I just don&apos;t know what that way is.
		It&apos;s a project for another time though.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="credit">
	<h2>The credit union</h2>
	<p>
		I stopped by Selco to pick up a cashier&apos;s cheque to pay my rent for next month.
		One of my neighbours switched to Selco a while back, and when they were trying to convince me of how great Selco is recently, they cited the fact that their old bank wanted to charge them for a cashier&apos;s cheque, while Selco supposedly gives them away to members gratis.
		I figured this was just a credit union thing.
		I&apos;ve had accounts with three credit unions in the past in total, and both non-Selco ones gave away cashier&apos;s cheques as well.
		Oregon Community will only give you one per day; after that, they charge.
		First Tech Federal, last I had an account with them, had no limit to the gratis ones.
		So it didn&apos;t surprise me that Selco might let me pick up one or two per month, one for rent and one for my occasional tuition, without charge.
		I asked about the price though, expecting to be told they were gratis and they&apos;d tell me what limitations are in place.
		They&apos;re not gratis though.
		They charge two dollars each for them.
	</p>
	<p>
		To be honest, I don&apos;t mind.
		I&apos;ll just continue getting my cashier&apos;s cheques from Oregon Community.
		Due to Selco support not actually providing any support, I&apos;ve stopped bringing my pay cheques to Selco anyway, so the money I need for taking out cashier&apos;s cheques is already going to be at Oregon Community; it&apos;ll be easier to get cashier&apos;s cheques there.
		Still, I can cross that off the list of reasons Selco is &quot;the best&quot;.
	</p>
	<p>
		I&apos;m only bringing loose change and bills to Selco at this point.
		It&apos;s a chance to use their coin counter.
		People mix up their coins, then don&apos;t sort them later and just dump them into the coin counter.
		The coin counter has a magnet that tries to steal your non-$a[US] currency, so a lot of foreign coins can be found if you know where to look.
		People even leave coins in the coin return cup sometimes, where coins that don&apos;t stick to magnets end up.
		So using the coin counter gets me close enough to do a bit of a treasure hunt.
		I guess that&apos;s all Selco&apos;s really good for at this point: entertainment.
	</p>
</section>
END
);
